As of today, I have been with A for 76 days. so I’m just 12 days short of how long it takes for men to fall in love, according to psychology. Do I believe this? I’m not exactly sure. Do I feel like he loves me? Yes.
Jay Shetty says in his book 8 Rules of Love, that you should be making space for someone to be themselves. And I feel as if he admires, appreciates and values who I am as a person. Now, does this constitute to love?
No.
You can’t truly love someone until you have seen them in every stage of life.
But you can love the idea of them, or parts of them. The reality of it is, he hasn’t seen me in true anger or depressed or when I’m feeling unmotivated. 88 days just isn’t enough time to see all seasons of someone.
Let’s take a walk down hypothetical lane. He loves me, we marry within the year, we commit to each other. I lose someone close to me. So close that it completely breaks me. (If you’ve read my work before, you know that I’m all too familiar with death and loss.)
Will he know how to comfort me? Will he know what I need? Will this push him away?
After 8 years and an engagement, the death of my best friend was the trigger for my ex-husband-to-be to decide he didn’t want to be in a relationship with me. He couldn’t handle my situational depression of losing someone that meant more to me than him.
Now, to not compare the two men, this could very well happen again. And on hypothetical lane, we are married and committed to each other. What’s he to do? Is he going to love me through that? Ex-husband-to-be didn’t.
This could be my trauma talking because at the end of the day, love is a choice.
I say this confidently and all knowingly. Knowing that when you choose love, you choose to love and be loved. You choose to stay with someone through their pain and through their glory. So love didn’t choose me the first time.
In those 88 days, did he learn to choose me? Is he going to choose me? And how do I know if 88 days is enough time to be able to make this choice?
I’ll be back on day 88.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Michael Fenton on Unsplash